


(To Think That We Could) Stay The Same

by tolstayas



Category: Harlots (TV)
Genre: F/F, its very soft and mostly about the aesthetic, title from mitski
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 14:55:17
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 997
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18054659
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/tolstayas/pseuds/tolstayas
Summary: This would be a hundred times easier if we were young again; but as it is, and it is…It's all about the way, sometimes, wedostay the same.





	(To Think That We Could) Stay The Same

They weren’t really talking, just sitting - it must have been a few years ago now, she thinks - they were sitting under a tree. Yes, with their legs in the sun.

 

They were sitting there and she had thought of another tree, somewhere, under the same sun, even longer ago. Very distant. She had remembered it and it had wavered in her mind uncertainly between memory and dream; she wasn’t sure at all which it was. But it was overwhelming. All of a sudden it was all she could think of. It jolted her as if she had fallen into the memory from a the top of a ladder.

 

“Do you remember,” she had asked Margaret, trying to identify the moment that had caught her like a crosscurrent, “sitting under a tree like this one, when we were very young… In spring, I think. There was a smell of… something nice. There was a sound - maybe we were by the river. And we just sat here and didn’t say anything at all?”

 

“I think I do,” Margaret had replied, slowly.

 

“I thought maybe I had dreamt it,” she said.

 

“No, I do, I remember. I laid in your lap, do you remember? And you braided my hair.” Margaret smiled.

 

“You know, I can barely remember anything that happened at that time. And I don’t want to, either.” A silence. Acknowledging the evil things that had happened to them both. Nancy sighed. “I would have liked to remember what I was like before, though. You know, before everything.”

 

“Remember at the beginning? We would tell each other the same stories, over and over again. Sometimes a few nights in a row. Sometimes more than once in a night. We would remember things. About before. We thought we could stay the same that way.”

 

“I don’t know if we stayed the same. But we stayed ourselves.”

 

Margaret nodded.

 

“I don’t remember any of the stories we told each other,” Nancy went on. “Just that day under the tree.”

 

“Now here we are again.” Margaret smiled a sort of wistful smile, and turned herself around - “May I?” - and lay down in the grass, with her head in Nancy’s lap.

 

It was unbearable.

 

“Yes,” Nancy murmured. “And - may I?”

 

And she ran her fingers through Margaret’s hair, gently, not quite braiding, just as they were not quite talking. Just sitting. And it was unbearable - the way Margaret’s face was dappled in the soft light that filtered through the leaves, the way strands of her hair drifted around her shoulders, the wistful way she smiled.

 

They sat like that for a long time until it was too unbearable altogether and Nancy drew in a sharp breath and whispered, “You kissed me.”

 

Margaret opened her eyes and murmured, “What?”, because she hadn’t heard or hadn’t understood, and Nancy almost lost her nerve, but then she didn’t.

 

“You kissed me,” she repeated. “That day, all those years ago. Do you remember that?”

 

“Yes,” Margaret said, slowly. Thoughtfully. “Yes, I do. Why did I do that?”

 

“I…” Nancy didn’t want to say she remembered. Didn’t want to say too much. Didn't want to sound like she was _asking_. She wasn't so desperate. It would be a hundred times easier, she thought, if they were young again, and she could blame it on that, and call it frivolous, call it a passing folly. But it had been too long, and there was something in her that demanded she say it. Something overwhelming. “I asked you to.”

 

Margaret let out a little breath, like a beginning of a laugh. Not a mocking one, though - a laugh of curiosity, of surprise. “You did, didn’t you? Why did _you_ do that?”

 

Why did she ask? Of course she knew. She had always known. Could she be wanting to hear Nancy say it?

 

Nancy felt too warm, too close, too fragile suddenly. Margaret noticed.

 

“Nance? You alright?”

 

Nancy nodded and shrugged at the same time, trying to wave it off. There was a quiet moment. But it was unbearable, it was inevitable. It was the same story being told again, many nights later, by a girl just trying to stay the same - and perhaps succeeding.

 

“Mags?”

 

“Yeah?”

 

“Can you - could you -” her throat was dry, and she almost laughed at herself. It was overwhelming. She was still the same, it was all still the same. “Could you kiss me?”

 

There was a second quiet moment, and Nancy’s heart froze, but then she looked and she saw it - the unfurling of a smile across Margaret’s face, not just a wistful one. A warm, almost a fond smile, almost a loving one. Yes - a loving smile.

 

And very gently Margaret sat up and put her hands on Nancy’s face and said, “Of course,” and kissed her on the lips.

 

And yes, it would have been a hundred times easier if they had been young, and could have blamed it on that, and called it whatever they wanted.

 

But Nancy remembers it all the time. She thinks about it when she’s alone and when she’s with Margaret and when something reminds her of it, which is often. She sort of hopes and sort of dreams about it when reality is too hard to dwell on. She remembers it like a mirror image - the tree of long before growing by the river, the tree of a few years ago glistening, dreamlike, on the water’s surface - and the way everything had been the same, the way she had always hoped it could be. Just the same. The story told again, many nights later.

 

And she knows that there will be an end, someday. But the end is never as real as the beginning; this is what she believes.

 

And maybe it would have been easier, but there is value, immeasurable, unbearable value, she thinks, in being older now, and having nothing else left to blame. In having nothing else left to call it - nothing but love.


End file.
